A life lived in the feminine. Hear my tales.

Tag: anxiety disorders

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Type A, overachieving organizer or a Type B, laid back slacker — many people have to learn how to deal with anxiety. Even people you see as outgoing and “King or Queen of the World,” or those who are so laid back they couldn’t possibly stress a thing, can struggle when it comes to dealing with anxiety.

Sometimes, it’s easier to tell who’s anxious from who’s not, but an individual’s personality type can play into how anxiety presents itself to the outside world. Here are 8 unique ways in which a Type A personality and a Type B personality express anxiety differently.

You may be the boss of you as an adult, but when you have anxiety, it can feel as if you are never in charge. There may seem to always be something hovering over you and stealing the wheel from your hands when you least expect it. In so many ways, anxiety can operate like a prison. It’s a sentence that you didn’t ask to serve or do anything to bring it on — most likely anxiety was handed to you by genetics or a traumatic situation — but it’s one that many people deal with, whether as a short-term sentence or a life-behind-bars type of scenario. It took separating from a former partner for me to understand how it had affected me.

And it wasn’t just my anxiety that reared now and again (an occasional sentence? community service?) that hurt my progress emotionally, but it was being romantically involved with someone who held it against me, hovering over my head, trying to make me feel bad about myself. Using it as a weapon for control.

It made the anxiety worse, not better, and in that case, there were two prison guards and one operated more covertly than the other (the former partner, not the anxiety). As I walked away from the situation, I started to see the writing on the wall.

I realized I was worth something and that while I can be anxious, anxiety does not rule and will NOT rule me.

We are our own worst critics, but some of us have a literal scoreboard in our head that’s constantly giving us the “thumbs down.” It’s like living with a movie review team in your head. Except, unlike the famed Siskel and Ebert, the critic in your mind doesn’t have a day off or a moment of rest.

On one hand, being hard on yourself has pluses: people who don’t really care about what they say and do aren’t typically out making the world a better place. Someone who’s hard on themselves is someone who cares about their time on this planet, and that’s a good thing! Where it becomes problematic is the intense self-criticism that sucks the joy out of life and the intense “second-guessing.”

Are you too hard on yourself? Here are a few signs you need to ease up the pressure.

Your accomplishments are never enough.

You got published somewhere huge. You landed the big raise. Your master’s thesis was accepted. It’s all just bliss and kittens to everyone … except you. You should have done X. You should have gotten 5K more in that raise. Did they really approve your thesis idea? Sure, but I bet they didn’t love it.

Having anxiety isn’t fun, but it seems like anxiety is continuously making its way into my life. And that means I’ve got to fight anxiety right back. After having my first panic attack in February and then multiple ones in August, I decided I had had enough.

I wanted to tell anxiety to sit in the back seat while I drove the car, and I haven’t looked back since. Does anxiety sometimes try to grab the wheel, swerving me off the road? You betcha. But it doesn’t mean I’ll take it quietly. Instead, I work every day to kick anxiety’s little tiny butt. And here’s how you can, too.

1. Admit you have some form of anxiety disorder.

Admit you have a problem or sometimes have anxiety, whatever the case may be, and accept it. This is the single biggest step towards kicking anxiety’s ass. If you pretend you don’t have it or try to make excuses for your behavior, you won’t improve. Realizing that anxiety affects you and that you need to take back control is the best way to have a happier life.

2. Realize that getting help doesn’t mean going on medication.

I’m not a big fan of meds, even for panic attacks. But it’s a case-by-case and personal preference basis. Either way, getting help for your anxiety is the only way to gain control.

I highly recommend cognitive behavioral therapy, otherwise known as CBT, because anxiety is so rooted in our way of thinking — negative thoughts, catastrophizing, projection, and fear. CBT addresses ways to change your thinking and point of view.

For me, I’m now able to tell when I’m buying trouble where there is none, or if I’m catastrophizing about the future. CBT is helping me to do this. CBT can also help you gradually address fears and phobias with the guidance of a therapist to which it becomes a fear no longer.

Parenting with anxiety means you’re never quite parenting alone. Nope, there’s always that thread or undercurrent of fear or worry that accompanies us anxious folks that we try to battle or subdue in order to parent without fear. And when I say parent without fear, I mean “parent without the fear of everything and anything thanks to anxiety making you a bad parent,” not parenting without fear, period, because what parent doesn’t get a little afraid sometimes?

As a person who has anxiety — anxiety doesn’t have me! (well, at least not today) — managing anxiety is crucial so that way my daughter doesn’t feel anxious and I feel better, too. I’ve had to mentally train myself to not hoverand it helps that I was once a teacher, so I know the importance of sitting back and letting children do things on their own. Despite my worrywart ways, I am adept at encouraging my daughter to be independent and not to ask me to do things for her. Still, the voice inside my head that panics from time to time when she’s trying something risky at the park or the voice inside my head that scolds me over every little thing I have done is a beast I have to master and control.

There you are about to do something when … wait. Should you really do that, or perhaps something else?

Is this you: standing in the middle of the supermarket trying to debate over something as frivolous as a box of rice? If you answered yes, congratulations! You are an over-thinker.

1. We constantly hear, “Just choose already!”

If you’re an over-thinker, you’ve heard that phrase a zillion times. People act like it’s oh-so-easy to just make a choice. And sure, sometimes it’s easy; for instance, would you prefer Brad Pitt or your husband?

Easy choice, but when you’re an over-thinker, you know that making a choice is torture, plain and simple.